Billboard announced today that they’ve teamed up with Twitter to launch Real-Time Charts tracking the social media site’s shares of trending music.

Mixmag reports (via the Twitter Media Blog) that Billboard, the recognized standard in sales and popularity charts for music, looked to today’s leader in real-time information sharing to bring up-to-the-minute data on the popularity of new music on Twitter, currently addressing the US only.

The move brings with it four new charts, two real-time and two calculated weekly, to the Billboard lineup:

Billboard Twitter Trending 140 Chart
“Summarizes the volume of music conversation about the most shared tracks on Twitter in real time, measured by acceleration over the past hour.”

Billboard Twitter Emerging Artists Chart
This new chart measures and ranks the most shared songs on Twitter in the US by up-and-coming artists, which they define as those who have fewer than 50,000 followers and have never appeared as a lead artist in the top 50 of the Billboard Hot 100. The key metric reflects the number of times each song was shared over a 24-hour period.

The Weekly Billboard Twitter Top Tracks Chart
A weekly ranking of the most shared songs on Twitter in the US, listed by the raw volume of shares over a seven-day period (Monday through Sunday).

The Weekly Twitter Emerging Artists Chart
Similar to the above “Billboard Twitter Emerging Artists Chart,” the weekly version ranks the most shared songs on Twitter in the US by up-and-coming artists as defined above, but over a seven-day period instead of 24 hours.

The charts can be found on Billboard.com and in print in a weekly feature in Billboard Magazine. Additionally, the results will be distributed via “Real-Time Rewind,” a new video segment highlighting the week’s movers and shakers. Fans can follow @TwitterMusic and @Billboard for regular updates on chart movements.